Health Canada grants exemption to Insite drug injection centre

Health Canada has granted Vancouver’s Insite supervised drug injection site an exemption to operate for another year, Vancouver Coastal Health announced in a statement today.

Health Minister Terry Lake thanked Health Canada for its “compassionate decision,” saying North America’s only legal drug injection facility is “an important component of our response to substance use and addiction and we continue to support supervised injection along with other harm reduction services.”

Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said Insite has “drastically improved” health outcomes for clients and the community since it opened in September 2003.

“We know Insite works,” Daly said in the statement. “Thousands of overdose deaths have been prevented, the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis C have been reduced and clients can more easily connect to health services like detox and primary health care.”

Since September 2011, the health authority has been required to apply for an annual exemption from Health Canada to operate, despite an earlier B.C. Supreme Court decision saying the facility could operate indefinitely.

News of the exemption comes as the federal government passed Bill C-2, known as the Respect for Communities Act, yesterday in the House of Commons. Health officials and harm reduction advocates have described the bill as setting out an onerous list of criteria that makes opening another injection site in Canada very difficult, if not impossible.

Flickr CC: Vancouver Costal Health

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